-- "are about making wise decisions to attempt to increase your wealth. They are not about joining in some sort of movement. Leave that for those who are more interested in 'being right about things' (in their own minds) rather than being successful. Do not forget this."

As GATA is not an investment adviser but a civil rights and educational organization, it doesn't presume to tell people how to invest, though if they are going to invest in gold, of course GATA would prefer, for the sake of the free and transparent markets we pursue, that they purchase real metal and not imaginary metal, not mere claims against financial institutions that, at the behest of governments, are doing their best to control the metal's price by creating imaginary supply.

But GATA is aware of a school of thought that, quaint as it may seem, indeed advocates investing as part of "some sort of movement." It calls itself "socially responsible investing" --

People involved with "socially responsible investing" want to prosper but aim to do so in accordance with their religious or moral principles -- that is, in accordance with "being right about things" ("in their own minds," of course, as if Norcini doesn't seek to be right in his own mind).

But regardless of whether investors want to restrict themselves with religious or moral principles -- want to profit in some ways but not in others -- they well might want to know as much as possible about what they are getting into. This is where the work of most technical analysts like Norcini has been failing, since it refuses to recognize and account for the massive interference with markets, particularly the monetary metals markets, by governments and central banks, creators of infinite money with which they can and do push price charts around, turning charts into mere holograms, depriving them of whatever meaning they otherwise might have.

Also still in fashion is what might be called psychological analysis of markets, as evidenced by last week's commentary by market letter writer Mike Swanson of Wall Street Window, who calculated that spikes in public interest in market manipulation, including manipulation of the gold market, signify buying opportunities:

Market manipulation, Swanson scoffs, is just the excuse investors use when they have lost money.

Maybe, but so much market manipulation lately has been admitted and punished with fines and financial settlements that it has to be taken more seriously than Swanson takes it.

Indeed, both technical analysis and psychological analysis must ignore surreptitious intervention in markets by governments and central banks or else they would be out of business. That's why neither analysis can ever address certain crucial questions:

-- Are central banks and governments trading surreptitiously in the gold, commodity, equity, and bond markets or not?

-- If central banks and governments are trading surreptitiously in those markets, is it just for fun -- for example, to see which government trading desk can make the most money by cheating the most investors -- or is it for policy purposes?

-- If central banks and governments, creators of infinite money, are surreptitiously trading the markets, what becomes of the market economy?

-- And if central banks and governments, creators of infinite money, are surreptitiously trading markets, how can the sentiment of ordinary investors matter much? How can anything in the markets matter more than the sentiment of central banks and governments?

Documentation of this surreptitious trading by central banks and governments is overwhelming and has been compiled by GATA here:

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